The Coloradan

Wednesday

Jan 8, 2014 at 9:33 AM

During my first six months in Texas after relocating from Colorado, I’ve come to anticipate the response from locals when they find out where I was born and bred. So as the newspaper’s token (not tokin’, but we’ll get there in a minute…) Centennial Stater, I feel it’s my duty to clear up a few misconceptions.

During my first six months in Texas after relocating from Colorado, I’ve come to anticipate the response from locals when they find out where I was born and bred. So as the newspaper’s token (not tokin’, but we’ll get there in a minute…) Centennial Stater, I feel it’s my duty to clear up a few misconceptions.

I do not ski. I have skied, I can ski, but I never choose to ski. Being from Colorado does not render me immune to the price-gouging on the slopes.

And anyone who’s ever made the trip into the Rockies along I-70, where you could feasibly be passed by an octogenarian speed-walker, knows that modern-day skiing in the High Country ain’t what it used to be.And speaking of High Country, Colorado is the first state to legalize marijuana, in case you haven’t heard. My two cents (Two dimes?): It’s not going to change the state all that much; anyone who wanted to smoke pot was already doing so. After the initial high of legalization wears off (almost done punning, hold on), everyone will realize the media was mostly just blowing smoke.

But drugs and downhills aside, by far the most common reaction people have to my birth state is commenting on the weather. Especially with the recent cold snap, every convenience store clerk I meet asks the same question: "This weather’s nothing to you, is it?"

People of Texas, I am not a cold-indifferent automaton. I do not enjoy sub-freezing temperatures any more than you do. In fact, as I type this, I’m wearing a winter coat. Indoors.

The truth is, while the daily highs are indeed a few degrees warmer here than where I grew up, the trends are the same — if a day is cold here, it’s a bit colder there. But where Texas really has Colorado beat in the weather department is in the mornings.

In Colorado, when you walk out of your house in the morning after a night where temperatures frequently hit double-digit negatives, it hurts your eyes. The first minute of breathing is agony. In contrast, nightly temperatures here don’t seem to get too far below 30, so even if the high for the day isn’t much above that, the mornings – even cold mornings – are gorgeous.

So when you’re trying to spot a Coloradan, don’t look for a guy holding a joint or a guy with a ski rack on his car; don’t even look for a guy wearing short-sleeves in winter. Look for a guy smiling inexplicably when the morning thermometer reads 19.